This leads us to a problem with the liturgy that not only demonstrates how its actions runs counter to Scripture, but also presents a significant issue for the Church of England to address if no disciplinary action is taken on those who carried it out. Having identical vows for both partners of a same-sex marriage, while at the same time drawing on the Ephesians 5 model for those vows, implies that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding in the church’s application of Ephesians 5 up to this point. The BCP service indicates clearly that the sexual distinctiveness of the two partners is critical to understanding the mystery of the sexual union of the spouses – the gay union liturgy implies that it is not.
This leads us to wonder whether the claim that same-sex marriage undermines heterosexual marriage may actually have a great deal of merit. If the Church of England accepts and permits this gay union liturgy (which we have clearly seen is a gay marriage liturgy), then it will implictly condone this dimunition of the sexual model in Ephesians 5. If the gay marriage liturgy is permitted to be used again, or if it is not condemned and those who took part in it disciplined, the Church will by its actions implicitly accept that the analogy Paul uses in Ephesians 5 with explicit roles for the sexes is not in any sense a uniquely God ordained signify of the work of Christ.
Furthermore, to not condemn this liturgy and to discipline those who took part, the Church will undermine the guidelines of the House of Bishops found in Issues in Human Sexuality, Some Issues in Human Sexuality and the Pastoral Guidance on Civil Partnerships, that same-sex activity falls short of the behaviour expected of Christians, let alone clergy, fo the gay marriage liturgy clearly equates the validity of same-sex activity and married sex.
We have seen clearly that the liturgy used in this service is not just one of neutral commitment (as Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark Cathedral has claimed), but rather is a service deliberately intended to mimic the BCP rite of marriage and to replicate the core theology of sexual union and the signification of the union of Christ and the Chuch. that lies at the heart of that historic text. Unless the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury take clear action, not only to denounce the liturgy but also to discipline the clergy who took part in the ceremony (the officiant and the participants), they open themselves up to being responsible for implicitly accepting a major shift in Church of England doctrine. Nothing less than a definitive repudiation of this text and a clear steer that the doctrine of marriage has not changed will do, for the gay union liturgy is clearly not just a “blessing” but is actually a blatant attempt to establish gay marriage as a given within the Anglican doctrinal framework.
Interesting. His argument depends in part on an asymmetry in the pledges made by the man and the woman in the marriage liturgy–an asymmetry which is not found in the American 1979 BCP.
Hasn’t anyone else noticed that the horse has already left the barn?
The assertion that same-sex marriage undermines heterosexual marriage is ridiculously false. Quite frankly it seems to me that the greatest factor undermining heterosexual marriage is heterosexual marriage. Not to mention that fact that the first paragraph of this article seems to say that it is all about sex.
Looking on the bright side (?) of things, every challenge to Tradition confirms the Tradition. Heretics provide a useful service in that they help clarify doctrine. Let’s be clear, however, sinful actions must not be tolerated. Failure to conform with Tradition should result in censure, i.e., a confirmation that an individual has, by their actions, removed themselves from the Church. Let’s call it what it is – excommunication. Having said all that, those who commit such acts are clearly obstinate and are unlikely to respond to coddling. If authorities fail to take definitive action, then the “barn” will likely burn to the ground.
#3 I think you are dead wrong in most of what you wrote, but especially when you said,”Not to mention that fact that the first paragraph of this article seems to say that it is all about sex.”
How else can one describe the differences, unless perhaps using a persons sexual orientation or confusing the proposition by constantly saying man/man, woman/woman, sometimes man/sometimes woman, etc. I just don’t get your argument at all.
But then I’m old and probably not too sophisticated in these matters, like seem to be.
In #5, I should have written,”Like you seem to be.”
Does anyone foresee the Church withdrawing into the catacombs as it were and at least for a time suspend performing any marriages? People would have to make-do with Civil marriages. Article XXV states that there are only two Sacraments established by Christ, namely Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Those five commonly called Sacraments, that is to say Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction, are not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures; but yet have not like nature of Sacraments with Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God. Don’t get me wrong, I do not in any way shape or form support the “Gay Wedding”, but have heard, thus far, no one on any blog or forum bring up the issue that the Lord’s Supper played a part in the service and in doing so the parties involved did knowingly defile something which the Articles of Religion tell us clearly is a Sacrament.
“that the Lord’s Supper played a part in the service and in doing so the parties involved did knowingly defile”
And should anyone question who the “parties involved” were: besides the two same sex person, this would include clergy, witnesses, and guests.
[url=http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html]Pope JPII document link[/i]
During an audience granted to the undersigned Prefect, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, approved this Letter, adopted in an ordinary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and
ordered it to be published.)
Given at Rome, 1 October 1986.
JOSEPH CARDINAL RATZINGER
[i]a reminder from the elves: Long links cause problems for some readers depending on what browser they are using. Please use tinyurl.com if the link is longer than the comment box window. Thank you.[/i]
I think there is an important theological issue to be addressed by conservatives concerning a reassertion of a positive theology of marriage. If the orthodox view of marriage is to be upheld and be persuasive folks have to show that embodiment matters (not simply desires) and that gender differences are providential in God’s purposes.
The Roman Catholics have clearly begun to argue this with all the theology of the body stuff. I haven’t come across anything much with a similar significance within the Anglican tradition. Can one imagine the Primate of an Anglican Province devoting weekly talks for several years to the theology of the body – as JPII did?
Of course, the Catholics are able argue that embodiment matters because marriage, indeed sex itself, is intrinsically oriented in God’s providential purposes to procreation. Is anyone making similar arguments in the Anglican tradition?
One of the grave difficulties in the debate about SSU and gay marriage is that TEC seems to have no clear sense about what heterosexual marriage is for in God’s purposes or what kind of pastoral praxis is appropriate to God’s will. Good grief, we have bishops that are on their third marriage.
driver8,
Bingo! You’ve just hit out of the park. Congratulations.
driver8, well said. Since TEC hasn’t respected marriage, it’s no wonder that many within TEC think same sex marriage is no big deal. That we have reached this point is really a reflection of how casual, how disengaged we have become with marriage and its purposes.
I admire how the Catholic Church has been tackling such issues head on.
[blockquote]One of the grave difficulties in the debate about SSU and gay marriage is that TEC seems to have no clear sense about what heterosexual marriage is for in God’s purposes or what kind of pastoral praxis is appropriate to God’s will. [/blockquote]
Indeed. We now have a California diocese whose bishop is telling his churches they should not do heterosexual marriages.
But it is not ridiculously false, #3. Quite the reverse. Hetero marriage both implies and is explicit about the relation between love and fertility. This relationship is a primary ccurrent in the deepest waters of both human nature and all evolution. Homosexual unions cannot help but deny this relationship, for homosexual unions are inherently and inescapably sterile. Such a union cannot be a marriage. To call it a marriage is a fundamental falsification. To falsify so fundamental a relationship is to damage it. To institutionalize such damage by law by refusing to admit such damage is to render the word “marriage” meaningless. To render the word meaningless does not mitigate the damage, it compounds it because it extirpates the concept from which the word necessarily grew. To destroy a concept is a crime hard to categorize. Every language gives denotational shape and form to concepts that other languages do not touch. This is why one can say things in Chinese one cannot say in American. But what shall we say of a culture which deliberately creates such a conceptual blank?
Your dismissal of the damage is, in my judgment, ill-considered to a degree and wholly inconsistent with the function of language, but it is surely consistent with the undertaking of the homophile agenda to wrench words from their context and assign arbitrary definitions generated to suit the agenda. We have seen this with “tolerance,” “normal” and the like, until both, as we have seen, have been rendered meaningless. And these two are but two examples in what is now a wide spread practice.
Americans are ever more and more careless of their language, and this partly explains why debate and argumentation in this country is so limited and unfocused. As we are losing our national identity because of the liberal fragmentation of social coherence, so we are losing our power to communicate as our conceptual bases are more and more etiolated by the egocentric belief in solipsism-as-language.
Larry
Actually, I don’t believe that homosexual “marriage” will undermine heterosexual marriage. I believe homosexual “marriage” is the result, not the cause, of the societal destruction (and willing participation in that by the Church) of heterosexual marriage.
When “so long as both of you shall live” is no longer considered the norm in marriage, then it just becomes another social contract that can be voided by any one of the parties with the appropriate legal mechanisms. Even in the Church today, marriage is far too lightly thrown aside and remarriage is far too easy to attain. We have a bishops and I am sure multiple priests who have been married 3 or 4 times. Very little is done to prepare too many couples for marriage and little is taught concerning the purpose of marriage or what Christian marriage is.
Is it any wonder that we are now seeing the result of this poor theological work in gay “marriage?” Gay marriage and the demise of heterosexual marriage are linked, but the causal relationship begins with the decline of heterosexual marriage.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
If you consider marriage to be a providentially ordered union of man and woman open to the gift of children then suggesting that same sex unions are “marriage” obscures God’s providential purposes.
Of course, I argued above that the very notion that same sex unions could be marriage could only have arisen as TEC itself had became increasingly confused about the providential nature and purpose of marriage. In other words, as the church was co-opted by rootless the bewilderment about relationships that marks our own culture.
Marriage in Scripture is always placed in the larger context of the binary order of creation. It assumes male-female distinctions. Homosex advocates must overthrow the entire binary framework of the Bible to achieve this theology.
Massachusetts and California justices actually quoted two opinions of the US Supreme Court to support the proposition that the legislature may not mandate a moral code for society at large.
Animal rights, protection of endangered species, many zoning laws, and a great deal of environmental protection – especially wilderness conservation – are based on moral imperatives
Our society puts its money, and lives, where its heart is: We have gone to war on more than one occasion because it was the morally correct thing to do. We have invoked God and the “preservation of our religion” (FDR) to justify and mandate military battle and outright war. So courts that deny morality as a rational basis for legislation are not only undermining the moral fabric of society, they run directly counter to actual legislative practice in innumerable important areas of society.
The male-female idea is God’s creative intent. To act contrary to that is an act of disobedience (sin) and a defiant exercise in self-will over that of our Creator.
Here’s a question – when was the last time you heard your bishop in TEC (for those of us who are or have been members of TEC) preach about the divine purpose of heterosexual marriage?
I should say in the COE, in dioceses that were certainly not progressive, over 15 years I never heard a bishop speak about the divine gift that is marriage. There may be a sense in which the orthodox let the theology of marriage wither on the vine – gently reshaping ourselves to the contours of our society – until we discovered we belonged to a church that had no theology of marriage at all and simply had no idea how to speak about the purposes of marriage.
Marriage is not spoken about in the pulpit because it’s just too damn embarrasing for the rector, who may be divorced, or has a Bishop who is; or least, much of the vestry has been. Until TEC recognizes the sinful way that they’ve treated the sacrament of matrimony, this all seems to be hypocritical blather. Personally, I think the reappraisers have a point on this one. Who are we to talk?
18. Daniel Lozier wrote:
The male-female idea is God’s creative intent. To act contrary to that is an act of disobedience (sin) and a defiant exercise in self-will over that of our Creator.
………………………………………………………………………………..
You’ve certainly hit the nail on the head. The gay community and the serial heterosexual marriages constitute self serving, egotistical and hedonistic behavior. The marriage vows and the reference to Christ habor explicit intent and meaning. Christ sacrificed Himself for us; likewise we are called to “pick up our crosses and carry them” in response to His call to us. Serial marriages and gay unions do neither. They reject the elements of sacrifice and self denial while celebrating the wonderment of self-actualization and self-fulfillment. If that isn’t putting oneself on the throne of Christ, I don’t know what is. But what do I know…..perhaps it’s all about God wants us to feel loved so we should do what we please.
“O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me and save me, a sinner.”
#20 Yes – I agree – but the way forward is not to add to the confusion about marriage but to begin to articulate a theology of married love that does justice to Scripture (rather than traduces it).
The first step is to recognize that marriage is not simply about desires but about embodiment – the union of a male and female in a life long love, open to the blessing of children.
#20, Bingo! You have hit the nail on the head squarely. One also has to be careful what one says about homosexuality, when a Bishop in the diocese has a ‘gay’ son, as does at least one other clergy family.
Actually it may be about more than theology. Stay with me on this, but one of the parties involved is a New Zealander, the other English. Therefore has the ‘civil’ ceremony effected the resident status of either one, or both parties. Can the Kiwi now claim British residence as a spouse, and conversely if they return to NZ, can the Britisher claim NZ residency. I foresee some interesting legal business over this. How would the US immigration service deal with this?
regards,
Jon
To use the argument (as is used numerous times above) that God’s desire for us to procreate is the justification for marriage to be uniquely male-female, one has to give some credence to Rome’s prohibition on birth control. To take back the procreation issue and make it a ‘when/if you would like children’ provision makes that argument against same-sex union difficult to sustain. Note that I do not favor same-sex union – and my wife and I are beginning to struggle with the idea of birth control, but haven’t come to a conclusion. However, if the rationale of procreation as justification for the exclusivity of heterosexual marriage is used (instead of plain biblical institution), it doesn’t take a finely nuanced mind to follow birth control down the path to same-sex union.
I t hink iI will disagree with your proposal #25, though it is reasonable, because I think the difference here is between a sterile rlationship and a potentially fertile one. T here are sterile hetero couples, but these are chance disorders of a normal system. Such cases do not invalidate the always-present condition of fertility. This is true of birth control as well, for the fertile relationship has not been fundamentally altered – altered only by circumstance, not biology. But the homosexual relationship is sterile by definition and can never be anything other than that. Would you agree to this position? Larry
In a post above I referenced a letter to Catholic Bishops from the Vatican on how to deal pastorally with homosexual persons. Good, but the incorrect article. [b]THIS curia details the reasons why homosexual marriage poses a threat to society and heterosexual marriage:[/b] [url=http://www…]http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html][/url]
Montanan: All one needs to do is see Pope Paul VI’s prescient comments in response to being pressured to fall into line with mainstream Christianity to accept contraception in the ’60s (he enumerated the downfall of the family, widespread divorce and abortion, degradation of women, etc.), so it’s easy to connect the dots to same-sex “marriage.” Top that off with a couple other masterpieces from Rome, Humanae Vitae and the theology of the body, and you have the blueprint for human relationships.
It’s not Rome’s teaching – it was the teaching of the whole church, including the Anglican part of it, until 1930, because marriage was given providentially by God, in large part, in order that children be born.
As it happens Anglicans were the first church in the history of Christendom who condoned contraception (under initially very restricted conditions) at Lambeth in 1930. The restrictions on using contraception within marriage were completely removed by Lambeth 1958. What had been a fixed teaching of the church for 1900 years became in 20 years in Anglicanism a matter of individual conscience about which the church had no view. Does it sound a familiar pattern!
The Catholic view is that every act of love between spouses should be open to the possibility of life. I think it’s fair to say that this is the historic view of the entire church. It might be possible to argue that “in general” married love should be open to the possibility of life. (My view is that whenever Anglicans say things like “in general” what they really come to mean is “in theory” and then we’re back to the same old place). Nevertheless it’s the kind of discussion Anglicans should be (and are completely not) having.
FYI there are some very effective and healthy natural means of family planning.
It’s also worth saying – in case you think that contraception and same sex unions aren’t theologically linked – that Rowan Williams in his infamous essay, “the Body’s Grace”, explicitly argued that once the providential purpose of sex had been theologically disconnected from the possibility of children (i.e. once contraception was seen as acceptable) then how was heterosexual love to be seen as theologically different from homosexual love?
driver8, you are very right in pointing out the lack of a theology of the body in Anglicanism, or the lack of an orthodox one. WO plays a strong role in this as well, as the bodily differentiation between man and woman is necessarily reduced in importance in order to justify sexual egalitarianism and women’s ordination. Galatians 3:28 is read in a way that would naturally lead to the conclusion that ALL sexual distinctions are irrelevant in the church now.
#31: This is exactly the point that Professor I’d Rather Not Say has made for a long time.
Where are you, IRNS? What say you now? (other than ‘I told you so.’)
You know, the natural beauty of man and woman together is that they fit geometrically. Together they form a complete and new unit in which nothing more can be added naturally. They are like a lock and a key, a hand in a glove, etc.
A homosexual arrangement does not work this way. How do two men make a sexual connection? the geometrical nature of their union becomes open ended. They are like two magnets. One’s south is attached to the other’s north, creating is a sense a structure identical to each of them, that is something with a north and south to which other magnets can be added in like manner ad infinitum.
This is my vision of the church now being created by our sexually degenerate and apostate would-be brethren: a continuous line, a circle even, of men buggering each other.
Behold. The new Communion.